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Reconsidering Frames of Reference

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BAM2014 9 -‐ 11 September 2014 -‐ Belfast, Northern Ireland

Reconsidering Frames of Reference:

Implications for Workplace Dispute Settlement

This contribution has been accepted to be presented as a full paper in BAM’s HRM track

by

Bernadine Van Gramberg# Julian Teicher##

*Greg J. Bamber## and Brian Cooper##

Abstract

In the post-1945 years many scholars and policy-makers focussed attention on the study of strikes, particularly their causes, conduct and consequences. But with the decreasing incidence of strikes in many countries, particularly beginning in the 1980s, their agendas shifted to other topics. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in industrial conflict, particularly individualised workplace disputes (e.g. claims of bullying and harassment). In this paper we re-consider Fox’s (1966) unitarist and pluralist frames of reference and examine their contribution to an understanding of the management of and settlement of workplace conflict. We use the two frames of reference because they are relevant to the contemporary practice of HRM and employment relations. Our contributions include a consideration of the role of individual agency and the importance of workplace justice in the settlement of disputes. We also draw conclusions in terms of conflict settlement theory and practice.

Keywords: unitarism, pluralism, workplace conflict, dispute settlement

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* Corresponding author: [email protected]

# Swinburne Business School, Swinburne University, Melbourne, Australia. ## Department of Management, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.


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Introduction Whereas the post-war period through to the 1980s was characterised by high and rising levels of strikes and other overt manifestations of industrial conflict, the subsequent period has seen strikes fall to historically low levels in countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, United States and Canada. Numerous explanations have been advanced for this change including monetary macro-economic policies, the rise of neoliberalism, declining levels of unionisation and hostile legislative regimes, which have constrained unions and industrial action.

In view of the decline in strikes, it could be concluded that industrial conflict has almost disappeared. However, Godard (2011) has argued in a variation of the ‘substitution thesis’ (Kornhauser, Dubin and Ross, 1962) that industrial conflict has not so much declined, but taken different forms. There has been a shift from collective to individual expressions of conflict. Even if this proposition is correct, the mechanics of the change are complex, and the task of drawing conclusions is complicated by issues of data collection and reporting of workplace conflicts, particularly those which are covert and individual. There are reasonably clear definitions of strikes. However, there is no readily available agreed definition of other forms of individual conflict (e.g. absenteeism and apathy), whether overt or covert, nor the ways in which the consequences can be identified and measured.

Setting to one side the issue of the relationship between overt and covert conflict, we will demonstrate that there is still much conflict at workplaces. Simultaneously the precepts of human resource management (HRM) with its general acceptance of a unitarist frame of reference have become widespread. With its focus on maintaining peace in workplaces by improving the alignment of individual workers with the interests of the enterprise, a decline in both overt and covert forms of industrial conflict could have been expected, whether collective or individual in its expression.

When people refer to industrial conflict they usually mean a departure from ‘normal’ work where employees are expected to ‘attend their workplace assiduously, perform their tasks conscientiously, and obey instructions submissively’ (Hyman, 1989a: 98). In workplaces, a specific instance of manifest conflict represents the failure of employees to conform to the employer’s expectations and it is generally seen negatively from an employer’s perspective. Where conflict is individual, however, it may be unnoticed or be mis-classified as poor performance or lack of motivation. Depending on the form and duration of the specific action, industrial conflict causes costs and disruption to varying degrees.

From employees’ perspectives, the same conflict may represent the means to obtain improved pay and conditions or to seek rectification of a perceived injustice, aims of both individual and collective industrial action. At least from one side then, conflict can be re-framed in a more positive light. But through the course of settling a dispute, the parties may gain a new understanding of themselves and their relationships and develop new expectations. Hence conflict and its settlement may represent only a temporary manifestation of a divergence of interests between interdependent parties in workplaces. This way of conceptualising conflict draws attention to the multiple dimensions and perspectives of industrial conflict. Accordingly, we consider the question: how do the two major frames of reference – unitarism and (neo) pluralism – contribute to our understanding not only of the causes of workplace conflict, but also its resolution?1

We start by briefly reviewing the changing patterns of industrial conflict in three Anglo-American countries and then we turn to a critical review of the two frames of reference. This sets the stage for us to reconsider the implications of the two frames for the settlement of workplace conflict, beginning with the classic work of Fox (1966).


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The paper aims to make three contributions. First, we provide insights into the extent and changing nature of industrial conflict, especially in Anglo-American societies. Second, while acknowledging the limitations of the archetypal unitarist and pluralist frames of reference, we draw on Fox’s insights to argue that the way in which conflict is perceived by the participants is an important prerequisite to understanding how it is manifested and the way in which it is likely to be resolved. Third, we argue that the value of the frames of reference can be enhanced by including a consideration of the role of individual agency and the importance of workplace justice.

The decline of industrial conflict?

For management and industrial relations scholars at least until the 1980s, industrial conflict and particularly strikes were an important concern and there was a tendency to compare the strike performance of industrialised countries, for example, the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

The incidence of collective expressions of conflict, that is, strikes, grievances and applications to tribunals and courts with jurisdiction over employment matters, is determined among other things by the strength of union organisation, the presence of grievance procedures and the overall legislative framework. Bingham (2003) found a decline in collective disputes in the United States, but a concurrent rise in individual conflicts.

The US experience with industrial conflict has been similar to that of the United Kingdom and Australia. The average number of days ‘lost’ per year in industrial disputes in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s was 300 days per thousand employees. By the latter half of the 1990s and early 2000s, there were only 20 days ‘lost’ per thousand employees (Dix et al. 2008:4). Working days lost due to industrial disputes in Australia declined from an annual average of about 4 million in the mid-1970s and early 1980s to an annual average of only 128,000 working days lost in 2006-2010 even though the total workforce population was then much larger then than in the early 1970s.2

Levels of strikes have tended to decline across a wide range of countries and there have been debates about whether there has been a shift from collective to individual forms of conflict and from organised to unorganised forms.

In the United Kingdom, Dix, Forth and Sisson (2008) have observed:

The past quarter century has seen a concurrent decline in collective expressions of conflict and growth in the individualised expression of conflict, most transparently manifest in a dramatic fall in the incidence of strikes and a rising tide of claims to the Employment Tribunal.

While conceding that the decline in union membership has had a downward impact on strikes and other forms of collective action, Dix and her colleagues also consider the increased opportunities for expressing (mainly) individual conflicts such as the development of laws on unfair termination and discrimination in employment.

While this decline does not mean that industrial conflict has disappeared, it lends support to the substitution thesis. As Dix and her colleagues argue, the idea of a substitution of individual forms of conflict for collective forms is simplistic ‘with the issues as well as the parties being different’ (Dix et al., 2008). Walker and Hamilton (2011) also noted the decline in collective action and an increase in claims and lawsuits by individual employees leading them to conclude that ‘individual disputes may now be the most relevant indicator of conflict’ (Walker and Hamilton 2011).


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Following the classic work of Hyman (Strikes 1989a), Godard (2011) has undertaken a comparison of trends in strikes among a group of industrialised nations leading him to ask pointedly: ‘If conflict is fundamental to the employment relation, has it simply been diverted into alternative, less organized and less overt forms since the 1970s?’ (Godard 2011:283). Determining the nature and extent of industrial conflict is complex.

Let us turn to alternative measures of overt conflict in Australia. The first of these is applications lodged with the national industrial tribunal, the Fair Work Commission, in respect of alleged unfair dismissals. These doubled from 7,461 in 2001/02 to 14,897 in 2010/11 with the increase being particularly marked since 2007/08. While the increased reporting may partly reflect growing public awareness of the availability of remedies for unfair dismissal, the size of this increase suggests other factors too. Similarly there has been an increasing number of complaints in the area of employment discrimination to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC). For example, the total number of complaints in the area of employment relating to disability, sex, race and age3 rose by 84 per cent between 2004/05 and 2010/11. While there has been a slight decline in the number of employment-related complaints in the areas of disability, sex and race in 2011/12, these are still much higher than earlier years.

The level of claims lodged does not tell the full story, as many people will not lodge claims, as Dix et al. (2008) have noted. None the less, there has been a rise in informal enquiries in Australia concerning employment-related matters (e.g. workplace bullying, unfair dismissal, interpersonal disputes). Over the decade to 2010/11, enquiries in relation to unfair dismissals increased by 271 per cent to 2,020, and bullying enquiries by 269 per cent to 1,564 over the same period (HREOC 2010). Informal enquiries are made by employees seeking advice and information, often at an early stage of their conflict, and may herald future claims.

The Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), a predecessor of the Fair Work Commission, also reported an increase in disputes referred from failed workplace dispute- settling procedures from 556 in 2001/02 to a high of 1,243 in 2008/09, after which the data reported were no longer comparable (AIRC, 2009).

What can we conclude from such data? While strikes have declined, industrial conflict has not vanished. We also observe that the rise of HRM and the associated shift from pluralist toward unitary frames of reference at most workplaces has not eliminated conflict. Employees who are constrained in how they exert their dissatisfaction may try to conceal their identity in expressing negative feelings through absenteeism, poor morale or other unproductive behaviours such as sabotage or taking revenge (e.g. Brown, 1977; Prassad and Pushkala, 1998). As Fortado (2005: 1191) observes: ‘Many conflicts are not resolved via ‘exit’, or a dispassionate deliberation in the context of a grievance procedure or problem-solving program, resulting in an acceptable explanation or adjustment being made.’ In many cases, workplace conflicts are followed by a return to work with the causal issues unresolved and employees may take out their frustrations in other ways. While Kornhauser, Dubin and Ross (1954) argued that there was an inverse relationship between covert and overt forms of conflict, in practice the determinants of industrial conflict are usually complex and it would be difficult to disentangle or even measure these multiple variables at the macro level. Nevertheless it can be expected that where the labour law regime restricts the availability of strike action, there may be an increase in covert forms of conflict and this would compound the costs and negative effects of the rise in individual overt conflict.

Recognising that while strikes have become relatively rare in the Anglo-American countries, other forms of overt conflict are still pervasive, we next consider the insights can be gained from the frames of reference literature.


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Theoretical framework: Two frames of reference In a research paper for the Royal Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ Associations (Donovan 1968), Fox drew on the work of Thelen and Withall (1949: 159) to describe a frame of reference as when an individual: ‘perceives and interprets events by means of a conceptual structure of generalisations or contexts, postulates about what is essential, assumptions as to what is valuable, attitudes about what is possible, and ideas about what will work effectively’ (Fox, 1966).

Unitarism In terms of attitudes towards conflict, the beliefs and associated assumptions lead participants to adopt particular ways of handling workplace disputes. The frame of reference adopted can also influence the way in which the state regulates workplace conflict. For instance, some have described the state’s role as being implicitly to create an enabling environment for employing organisations to improve their performance (Budd and Bhave, 2008). In Anglo-American countries political parties often engage with organisations representing employers’ and employees’ interests because, in doing so, they may receive political support once in government (Swenson, 1997).

Let us consider the unitarist and pluralist frames of reference and their implications for conflict resolution. In reality there may be some blurring between the two frames of reference; however, they do provide benchmarks from which we can consider how conflict is likely to be regulated by governments and handled in workplaces.

The defining feature of the unitarist frame of reference is the assumption that in workplaces, managers and employees have the same goals and that those goals are aligned with corporate objectives. Fox (1966:3) analysed unitarism as portraying an employing organisation as having ‘one source of authority and one focus of loyalty’. Many managers and government policy-makers tend to adopt a unitarist frame of reference, because it serves to legitimise management decision-making power and because it helps them to achieve their corporate goals. Employers’ predisposition towards unitarism reflects and reinforces management authority (Wright, 1995). More recently, the increasingly widespread adoption of the unitarist frame of reference in the HRM literature has been linked to the increasing prevalence of individualistic ideologies (Noon, 1992; Ackers, 2002).

In striving to achieve shared organisational goals, the unitarist frame assumes that harmony and co-operation between employees and their managers will prevail (Fox 1974; Thompson and McHugh, 1995). For those adopting this frame, conflict would be abnormal and consequently transgressors are viewed as aberrant and their conduct as illogical (Fox (1966:13). This ascription occurs not only because transgressors fail to obey management rules and decisions, but because they continue to transgress, despite knowing the goals of their employing organisation.

In view of management being the single source of authority, unions are seen as divisive and as harbingers of conflict (Fox, 1974). Such non-managerial sources of power are construed negatively because of their association with conflict, which diverges from ‘good’ management practice (Forster and Browne, 1996). Managers generally see ‘political behaviour’ or explicit conflict led by unions in work organisations as unacceptable resistance which can threaten employers’ interests and which should be eradicated (Badham and Buchanan, 1996). Arguably such conflict reflects a breakdown of authority relationships and organisational stability (Velasquez, 1988). Given the assumption of co-operation, it is not surprising that unitarist management literature tends to downplay the realities of organisational power and politics.


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There is no explicit role for the state in the unitarist frame, except as providing an enabling environment for law and order (Sycholt and Klerck, 2000) as observed above. There is no apparent role for an intervening state, as the unitarist frame tends to eschew the interference of third parties in the employment relationship. However, adherence to this notion does not always occur in practice; some describe how governments have intervened specifically to directly benefit employers (e.g. Cooper and Ellem, 2008). More pointedly, Finnemore and Van der Merwe (1996:131) list a range of policy stances considered as part of the neoliberal agenda including: procuring a cheap, docile and consistent supply of labour; subduing the labour movement and promoting weak workplace structures; reducing labour regulation, particularly with no minimum wage legislation; enhancing employer incentives such as providing tax breaks; and promoting individual labour contracts with minimal worker rights.

Pluralism Fox (1966; 1971; 1973; 1974) developed the distinction between unitarism and pluralism in employing organisations as a reflection of the reality of industrial relations in the United Kingdom in the post-1945 period. The development of the pluralist frame and the Industrial Relations Systems model (Dunlop, 1958) in particular reflected the post-World War II context and New Deal politics in the United States. Rather than envisaging enterprises as unitary structures, Fox saw pluralism as an alternative frame of reference, in which workplace actors form coalitions of individuals and groups with divergent interests. Such coalitions collaborate in ways that enable each to pursue their different (individual and sectional) goals, while also working towards the goals of the employing organisation. Thus conflicting and shared interests can coexist in organisations and strikes (or lockouts) are the most visible mechanisms by which the parties impose costs on each other. Collective forms of action usually require the participation and leadership of unions. The outcome of collective industrial action is usually a return to work, negotiations and agreement or one of a range of third-party forms of assisted dispute resolution. Subsequently scholars have argued that ‘individualism and collectivism are used interchangeably with the terms unitarism and pluralism, in this way suggesting that collectivism equates with trade unionism and individualism with non-unionism’ (Storey and Bacon, 1993: 670). Strikes too have been so closely associated with collectivism that the study of industrial relations itself is inextricably linked to industrial conflict (Guest, 1987).

Pluralism also challenges the unfettered terrain of managerial prerogative envisaged in the unitarist frame by presenting managers as decision-makers within a set of constraints imposed by the various stakeholders such as employees, consumers, suppliers, legal and governmental regulators. Consequently, decisions made in a pluralist frame reflect compromises forged in a competitive environment in which enterprises have to be ‘managed’ so that the complex web of tensions and conflicts do not threaten the viability of the collaborative arrangements.

In the pluralist frame of reference Fox (1974) portrayed conflict as a normal and inevitable part of life. Pluralist accounts of organisational life acknowledge the pursuit of interests, the development of political behaviour, the reality and ramifications of the imbalance of power (Pfeffer, 1992) and the struggle over scarce resources (Katz, Kochan and Colvin, 2008). While early writings on pluralism emphasised the competing economic interests between organisational actors, pluralism has also been associated with identity (Phillips, 1993), values and concepts (Provis, 1996) and professional sub-cultures (Schein, 1996). Pluralism and the associated rule-making procedures are designed to accommodate conflicting interests and resolve disputes between the parties (Poole, 1981).

There is an assumption in pluralism that there is a mediating state, which provides and supports the mechanisms and institutions for collective dispute resolution. The state can act


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as the neutral arbiter of disputes that cannot be resolved at the workplace or, as Clegg (1975) notes, it more often acts as the facilitator of a continuous series of compromises between the parties.

Fox held that, because of their role in representing employees, unions play an important role in readjusting or balancing power in workplaces and providing a voice for employees. Provis (1996) suggests that unions also play a role in providing a group identity and creating social cohesion among their members, which allows them to argue more effectively with one voice.

Managing workplace conflict and the frames of reference

The unitarist frame of reference In the unitarist frame, unions are seen as introducing distrust into a workplace and an appropriate managerial response is to implement measures designed to reduce the appeal of unions and simultaneously to promote strategies to strengthen the appeal of the enterprise leadership (Fiorito, 2001). In turn we could expect the role of HR managers would encompass promoting cultural change, developing reward systems and the like. Managers who adopt a unitarist frame are also likely to avoid communicating with and to refuse to negotiate with unions. They may resort to managerial prerogative in making decisions and would be prone to outbursts of resentment towards unions. Because such managers see conflict as abhorrent, they may put employees under close supervision and with little discretion to voice their concerns, making it more difficult for them to express conflict openly. Further, managers may be determined not to make concessions: ‘the employment relationship thus moves increasingly towards a purely contractual exchange’ where employment relationships are defined in narrow terms, as only an economic exchange of services (Fox, 1974: 301). The resort to contractualism by management has been linked with low-trust relations, where the parties wish to reduce discretionary dealings with each other to a minimum. This is ironic given the rhetoric of trust in HRM theory (e.g. Legge, 1995; Noon, 2002).

Where there is no union, or only low union density, in a workplace where managers adopt a unitarist frame of reference, we might expect that conflict would be individualised, such as raising complaints with supervisors, lodging grievances or claims (e.g. unfair dismissal), and using formal grievance procedures (Pollert and Charlwood, 2008). However, in some individualised employment contexts, such open expressions of conflict may be difficult, especially if employees fear reprisal from supervisors or co-workers. This may result in employees seeking less visible ways to express their grievances, for example, through absenteeism, sabotage, low morale, resignation or working without enthusiasm (Ackroyd and Thompson, 1999). As noted above this pattern of behaviour was analysed by Hyman (1989a) and revisited among others by Godard (2011).

In a study of the application of the unitarist frame to a conflict analysis in a US enterprise, Kochan (1982) found that the participants did not deny the existence of conflict, but attributed it to interpersonal, rather than economic or structural factors. Rather than focus on the union, management turned its attention to individual employees, particularly those branded as ‘troublemakers’. Under these circumstances, conflict management was concerned with winning employee conformity to the enterprise’s goals and decisions or perhaps by dismissing the transgressors.4

Managers would try to achieve conformity through a combination of (‘hard’) authoritarian repression and resort to contractualism; and perhaps by (‘soft’) engaging of employees’ emotional commitment by promoting team and family metaphors (e.g. Legge, 1989). Such managers would assume that these hard and soft measures would induce a belief that in a


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properly ordered world, managerial prerogative could always be enforced against the few malcontents by means of coercive power if necessary (Fox, 1974: 249-50).

A unitarist frame emphasises the importance of communication, because it is through communication that managers can try to persuade employees to understand the shared goals that they ought to pursue. For instance, Purcell (1987) describes the occurrence of conflict from a unitarist frame as stemming from misunderstandings that could be cleared up through better communication. The idea that good communication can reduce conflict reflects a major strand of thinking among many earlier organisational psychologists, and their ideas are well summarised by Hyman (1989a). Such ideas have not vanished from contemporary employing organisations; the growth of HRM is at least partly premised on the idea that we can ‘adjust’ differences at work through better communication (Legge, 1995). Important ways for senior managers’ to try to disseminate a shared understanding of their goals at workplaces are by them using techniques such as training in communication skills, not least in an attempt to reinforce corporate values and missions. To the extent that there are dispute-settlement procedures in enterprises in which the leaders subscribe to a unitarist frame of reference, the final stage is likely to be when senior managers make a unilateral determination of the outcome.

One form of communication-based dispute settlement has been the private mediation that was promoted to an extent in Australia, following the example of the United States (Lipsky and Seeber, 2003). Mediation is a process whereby parties in dispute meet on a voluntary basis with a neutral third-party to arrive at a mutually acceptable settlement. This mediator tries to induce a change in the way disputants perceive their problem – for instance, re-communicating to an aberrant employee who has undertaken actions inconsistent with achieving an important organisational goal. This outcome is accomplished by supplying relevant information, e.g. policy documents, to assist the disputants to achieve a ‘shared understanding’ of the problem at hand (Bay, 1994). Hence, mediation is a useful dispute-settlement device in the unitarist frame as it centres on communications, removes the need for third parties and has the aim of formulating an agreement, which is likely to coincide with the goals of the organisation. Various versions of this sort of communication are found in the research literature on transformative mediation (e.g. Bush and Folger, 1996).

The pluralist frame of reference Dispute-settlement mechanisms associated with the pluralist frame of reference draw on its core principles, such as competing interests and the ability to mobilise collective power in workplaces. Against such a background, unions have been seen as a stabilising or countervailing force at the societal and at the workplace levels. Pluralism with its emphasis on diversity of opinions relies on mechanisms for allowing different interests to be heard and reconciled. The reality of power structures is that they tend to maintain the status quo, including unions. But in conflict situations, negotiations offer unions the possibility of moderating an employer-dominated process. Dunlop (1958) suggested that outcomes in workplaces were reflections of the wider power balance in society; he implied that there was a dynamic power balance in which no single force was always dominant.

Pluralist dispute-settlement processes are likely to be: based on negotiations (to reconcile differing interests), documented (to create new rules), and sophisticated in the number of avenues and steps created to ensure a settlement takes place and so are likely to end with a formal, independent hearing. Typically, this would involve the intervention of tribunals offering state-sponsored techniques such as conciliation and arbitration to settle disputes that


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have proved intractable to the workplace parties or have had unacceptable consequences for the wider society.

Because of the acknowledgement of competing interests, the process would ensure a high degree of participation from disputants who are directly involved in the dispute along with other stakeholders who have an interest in the dispute, for example, other employees in the enterprise. Employee representation would be encouraged to ensure opportunity for this broader employee ‘voice’ in a context of unequal power between the workplace parties. The focus of dispute-settlement processes from a pluralist perspective would consist of consultation, problem-solving and negotiation (Hyman, 1989b). Managers who generally adopt a pluralist frame may still eventually resort to an authoritarian repression of overt, disruptive conflict, based on their disquiet with those who do not conform to a pluralist ideology of mutual survival (Fox 1974).

Justice: An integrated approach to understanding workplace conflict One limitation of using the frames of reference approach to explain industrial conflict is that it may overlook agency-level causes of industrial-relations disputes. An agency-level focus considers human subjectivity and includes an exploration of an individual’s actions and reasoning and experience in the inter-subjective world (Giddens, 1994). One of these agency issues is the extent to which workers perceive fairness at work. Those who experience a sense of unfairness or injustice may seek to redress it and this may happen independently of whether there is a prevailing set of policies that reflect either a unitarist or pluralist frames of reference.

Both the unitarist and pluralist frames provide coherent sets of assumptions that enable us to infer how conflict is likely to be manifested, regulated and resolved in workplaces. There is a premise in the unitarist frame that conflict should disappear where the workplace actors share the same goals or they can be induced to do so. Nevertheless, the experience in advanced capitalist nations including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States is that, overall conflict is normal though it takes an increasing variety of forms. In addition, the premise in the pluralist perspective that workplace conflict is inevitable tends to discount the potential for preventing or reducing industrial conflict. Neither of the frames provides a sufficient consideration of the causes of industrial conflict. This omission arises from the macro-level focus of these frames, which tends to downplay the roles of the individual or agent in generating conflict. In the case of unitarism with its ostensible focus on the individual, this omission is all the more surprising. A better understanding of the role of the individual should assist in augmenting the frames of reference and providing a more holistic understanding of workplace conflict.

Much literature focuses on individual workers and can shed light on the causes of workplace conflict. We infer from equity theory, social exchange theory and justice theory that people will act to rebalance an unfairness inflicted on them (Adams, 1965; Tyler, 1988). Lind and Tyler (1988) argued that, as employees have ceded authority to their managers under the terms of the employment relationship, employees are aware that decisions made by management may be exploitative or may be underpinned by ulterior motives. Employees deal with this dilemma by measuring decisions against their own principles of fairness. Decisions which pass their personal fairness test are more likely to be accepted by employees, so the authority making such decisions is more likely to be obeyed in the future. These judgements reveal the concept of justice, which applies not only to the formal legal process, but also to workplaces:


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Whether the individual in question is a worker receiving tasking orders, an employee being ordered to accept a particular resolution of a dispute in his or her section, or a corporate executive deciding whether to accept an arbitrator’s non-binding judgement on an interorganizational dispute, perceptions of fairness will be used as a short cut to deciding whether to accept the authority’s decision or reject it. (Lind, Kulik, Ambrose and de Vera, 1993: 225)

Employees make a decision about whether a particular managerial action is fair using such principles as balance and correctness. The balance of an action happens when an individual compares his or her own treatment against that of another. Individuals use the principle of correctness by applying their own sense of right and wrong, consistency, accuracy, or morality to that decision. Generally, these principles are applied at three levels of analysis: outcomes (e.g. a pay rise), procedures (e.g. the bargaining process), and systems (the organisational context in which the procedures are based and the interpersonal treatment of the disputants). To be regarded as just, employees must evaluate all three levels as fair (Turner, 1993). Research into justice in the workplace has emphasised the importance of these three main types of justice: distributive, procedural and interactional justice (e.g. Greenberg, 1994).

Consequently, workers who feel that they have been treated unfairly may withhold their labour, withdraw discretionary effort or disengage from work (Bies and Tripp, 2001). Exit-voice theorists argue that when employees are dissatisfied at work they may either quit (exit) or voice their concerns (Hirschman, 1970). When workers are denied avenues for voice, they may resort to other more inchoate expressions of their dissatisfaction. Low-level hostility can grow into larger, negative manifestations including a range of expressions of workplace conflict. So, the denial of justice at work is likely to be a strong trigger for workplace conflict.

Not only can fairness perceptions be described as triggers of workplace conflict, they are also considered to be a general heuristic. In other words, unfair treatment can have a similar effect on people regardless of gender, age or nationality. For instance, Tyler’s (1988) US studies of fairness in mediated outcomes found that a random sample of citizens of Chicago from varying ethnic backgrounds and economic status held a shared definition of the meaning of the term fair process and had similar ways of evaluating whether they had been treated fairly. The key issues which Tyler observed as dominating disputant assessments of whether the process was fair were: the ability to participate in the process; a sense of ethical appropriateness which involved a level of interpersonal respect afforded to the disputants by a third party; the neutrality of the third party; and the outcome of the dispute, which must be fair. The common elements of a fair decision, then, cover aspects of procedural, distributive and interactional justice (Greenberg, 1984, Tyler, 2012). The extent to which employees react to unfair treatment is relative to the comparisons they make with their reference groups, their context and the situation – see e.g. Brown and Sisson (1975) on fair wage comparison; Ambrose, Seabright and Schminke (1991) on social comparison theory; and Crosby (1984) on relative deprivation theory. If these fairness reactions are, as research suggests, common to workers regardless of race or culture, then we can generalise their importance to facilitate our understanding of the triggers of workplace conflict.

So, if the denial of justice at work causes conflict, can the provision of justice act to reduce or even prevent such conflict? Research suggests that it can. When employees perceive there is organisational justice, they are more likely to reciprocate with commitment, greater job satisfaction and to engage in extra-role behaviour (Greenberg, 1994; Colquitt, 2001; Fields, Pang and Chiu, 2000). Such a scenario invokes the unitarist ideal of harmonious relations at work and an absence of conflict. It also provides an insight for pluralists: that by affording


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workers greater fairness at work, conflict could be rather less likely than pluralists would tend to assume.

Conclusions

This paper reconsiders the influential unitarist and pluralist frames of reference and shows that the way the workplace is viewed shapes the ways in which conflict is conceptualised and the method of settlement likely to be employed. Broadly, pluralists tend to see conflict as inevitable and recognise that the parties in workplaces have competing interests. In contrast, unitarists tend to see unions as intruders into otherwise harmonious employer–employee relationships where parties strive to achieve shared goals. The role of governments in these frameworks has been less explored in the literature. But the frames of reference are linked to managers’ and governments’ policies and legislation, because it is through successful political agency that employers’ interests (and unions) have from time to time influenced governments’ industrial-relations policies (Swenson, 1997).

Perhaps surprisingly, these two frames of reference both lack a consideration of agency level factors such as the justice perceptions of workers or the concept of workplace justice. As we have shown in our overview of the literature on workplace justice, workers who perceive an injustice against them may take retaliatory action according to the means available to them. In other words, at the heart of workplace conflict is the extent to which employees perceive they have been denied justice at work. Where workers are unionised this might result in a strike, whereas where there is no union and a direct relationship between managers and workers, the result is more likely to take an individualised form (e.g. absenteeism or apathy).

Given the centrality of the employer–employee relationship in the unitarist frame, there is little role for ‘third parties’, particularly unions, but also for industrial tribunals and governments. The unitarist and pluralist frames can help us to explain how conflict managers try to settle conflict. In the pluralist frame, the state may be conceptualised as a neutral arbiter of disputes and the provider of institutional machinery to hear the voices of all parties concerned. If the matter cannot be resolved through collective bargaining or negotiation supervised by a state agency, there could be a binding settlement provided by arbitration. This would also take into account public interest issues beyond the disputants to a particular case. In contrast, under the unitarist frame the prevalent view is that unions and other third parties have little or no role, the state is not seen as the final arbiter and is confined to a smaller and less visible role creating an enabling framework and with the primary emphasis on the parties themselves coming to an agreement, perhaps with the assistance of mediation. Disputes are seen as abnormal and where they do occur they are meant to be resolved through communication and discussion or by managerial decision, or by dismissing ‘troublemakers’, though the last is not confined to unitarists.

The frames of reference do not specifically deal with the issue of workplace justice, the perceived denial of which we have identified as one of the potential triggers of workplace conflict. The silence of the frames of reference on individuals’ perceptions of workplace justice has implications for theory and practice and represents an important area for future research on the causes of workplace conflict.

A novel contribution of this paper is its consideration of the association between the two frames of reference with conflict settlement theory and practice. We argue that, while both frames of reference are associated with certain manifestations of conflict and certain types of conflict resolution, neither addresses the causes of conflict in workplaces. There is scope for more research on workplace conflict and its triggers in the light of the frames of reference and for a greater understanding of how theories of social exchange, justice and exit-voice


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inform the management of workplace conflict. These theories help to increase understanding of the relationship between the treatment of individuals and their behaviour in workplaces. Understanding how individuals respond to a denial of justice will better inform the development of conflict theory and may assist in developing further principles of workplace justice and dispute settlement.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge that the research on which this paper draws was made possible by an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grant to the authors: ‘Efficiency, justice and voice: A study of effective ways to prevent and settle workplace disputes’. For more insights into this research contact the authors and see: Van Gramberg, B. Bamber, G. J. Teicher. J. & Cooper, B. 2014, 'Conflict Management in Australian Workplaces', in W. Roche, P. Teague & A. Colvin (eds) Oxford Handbook of Conflict Management in Organizations, Oxford University Press, Oxford: www.oxfordhandbooks.com

Notes

1 We do not discuss here the radical frame of reference, the third frame of reference conceptualised by Fox (1974), as the radical frame does not address our focus on conflict settlement, but rather provides critiques of the other two frames of reference. However, we 1 We do not discuss here the radical frame of reference, the third frame of reference conceptualised by Fox (1974), as the radical frame does not address our focus on conflict settlement, but rather provides critiques of the other two frames of reference. However, we acknowledge the insights derived from these critiques. 2 The older data are from http://www.ilo.org/global/statistics-and-databases/lang--en/index.htm, supplemented for the most recent data from national sources e.g. http://www.ons.gov.uk and www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/by%20Subject/ 1301.0~2012~Main%20Features~Workplace%20relations~300 (all accessed 1 March 2014). The authors would be glad to provide more details of such data on request, but space limits preclude including it in this paper. 3Australia’s Age Discrimination Act was implemented in 2004; see: http://humanrights.gov.au/info_for_employers/law/index.html (accessed 26 January 2013). 4 Compared with most other Anglo-American countries, dismissing ‘transgressors’ tends to be easier in non-unionised US contexts in view of the prevalence of the doctrine of ‘employment at will’ there and the lack of a general protection against ‘unfair dismissal’.

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